Musings on a Life in the Theatre, Tablet PC's, Cultural Issues, (oh, and the occasional emu sighting...)

9 posts categorized "Television"

December 04, 2011

Like everything else in my life in this insane year this post is a day late and a dollar short. The seventh anniversary of this blog was yesterday, December 3. But things in my life kept me from putting the finishing touches on the post and getting it published on the big day. On some level that's unacceptable. On others it is entirely in character this year. But then, maybe we'll see that change in the new year.

Seven years. (and a day) That's how long I've been presenting the Ink Blot Awards as my way of recognizing the anniversary of this blog. It's been a fun ride. It's been full of laughs. I'm hoping this year's awards will also provide a few chuckles to folks who stop by and give them a read. Although the history is mostly ancient and perhaps bordering on the irrelevant, I think it is important to provide some of it as context. So here goes:

I created The Life On The Wicked Stage Ink Blot Awards as a celebration. Yes, it's a celebration of the 1 year anniversary of this blog. But it is more than that. It is a celebration of a community that I have come to know and admire. The Tableteers that make up the Tablet PC Community are an amazing collection of individuals who know and work with the Tablet PC platform. They are fiercely protective of it, insatiably curious about advancing it, very intelligent, often wickedly funny, at one time very forgiving and patient, and in the same breath, scathingly critical when the need arises. They are also exceedingly willing to evangelize the platform to anyone who will listen, and in my humble opinion, have helped keep the spotlight on The Tablet PC in ways that may, in the long run, prove to be responsible for keeping the platform thriving.

So much has changed in the time I started blogging that first year. It's changed with me and also that community has certainly changed. Those around me have changed as well in an eerie parallel to how things with Tablets have changed. Tablets mean different things now-a-days, although some of those who make them seem to have less penchant for success than Microsoft did.

What hasn't changed and what's consistent about Tablets is that they are still the very personal devices that they started out to be. Microsoft never recognized that. Apple did. Others tried to emulate without acknowledging the core reasons for Apple's success. And by and large they failed.

What's also changed is my attitude about politics, cultural happenings, and other things that I observe on this blog. I've also changed how I observe and remark about them. The convenience of Twitter and Google+ take something away from this blog. Sometimes I worry about that. Sometimes I don't.

I've become increasingly disenchanted with quite a few things this year. To be honest, I don't know why. I used to find it all entertaining in a "Human Comedy" sort of way. I don't find it that entertaining anymore. The ins and outs of life begin with the foibles of humans. It used to be that somewhere along the line we acknowledged that, celebrated it, and moved on, bettering ourselves in the process. While I think we still acknowledge it, and we might celebrate it, the only benefit we're deriving by moving on is to repeat the same things over and over again with an increasing frequency. I think this year's Ink Blot Awards reflect that with the number of repeats. Or they reflect my warped sense of things.

This was a year that so many things resulted in a "FAIL" that I think we have to look for a new buzz word for failure. Politics and the circus around it started performing without a tent and nobody cared that the clowns weren't funny any more. It's not that the clowns weren't funny that is maddening. It's depressing that no one cared anymore. Major tech companies became exposed for what can only be described as abhorent stratagies. New gadgets now depend on the same fickle first weekend sales that movies do. Of course if we had better gadgets being released, we'd probably see better results. Social networking became a parody of itself and all of that sharing resulted in a few shares too many or not nearly enough, depending on your perspective. Big media continued to prove that it doesn't have a clue. Little media seems to inexplicably want to follow that path as well. Oh, and Mother Nature reached up and smacked the planet around trying to get our attention. But aside from watching the compelling video and pictures we continued to just be thankful it wasn't us feeling her wrath, and sympathetic to those who did. The 99% became the Tea Party without the tea but with lots of party, because in the end the complaints are the same. For its efforts it got criticized by the 1% for being unorganized, dirty, and partying too much by the 1% that defines itself by making money and not making anything else so it can party. I think the 1% are just jealous because they feel like they have to dress up and shower in order to play their game. There's an old saying in show biz that if you put real life on the stage no one would believe it. I think if you put this last year on the stage, not only wouldn't anyone believe it, but Groupon would have a hard time selling discount tickets to it.

Last year's many repeats were due primarily to me spending the year dealing with my mother's terminal illness and ultimate passing. This year's repeats, I think, deal more with the fact that nothing has really changed. Change used to be a constant. I don't think it is as constant presently. On some levels I find that depressing, on larger levels I find that extremely human. I also find that it focuses those who are looking at life with 20/20 vision into a clearer view that someday may pull us out of the rut we're in.

Any pretense at aspirations aside, the rules for inclusion on the list are the same. Award winners are subject to my own whims and fancies. Some are best in class, some are just frivilous, some deserve the small heaping of scorn these awards might cast their way. Human nature, no matter the field of endeavor, is ripe with that which needs celebrating and that which needs derision cast its way. Good friend, Tablet PC MVP and fellow GBM contributor, Mark “Sumocat” Sumimoto, christened these awards with the nickname of ‘The Blotties’ in year one, and that sorta stuck. So we'll let it keep sticking. And finally, if you don't like the list, go make your own.

So, as always, hit the jump, cue the dancing girls, beat out a tattoo on the drums, sound the trumpets (or the theremin) and get ready for the Seventh Annual Life on the Wicked Stage Ink Blot Awards .

November 29, 2009

The big tech companies are going after each other tooth and nail. Apple is now working on its own maps app, obviously spurning Google, Microsoft is working with Rupert Murdoch to help make his bluff/threat to remove his media from Google search in favor of Bing, Apple has been working with Microsoft to bring Silverlight to the iPhone, continuing its spat with Adobe. It’s a dog eat dog world and at this point, no dog has an advantage. Steve Lyons says they all care less about creating new products than they do about hurting each other. That’s why “it’s just business” is such a pre-historic concept.

Sarah Palin and the Bard? Conservative Joseph Hatch compares those enraptured by Sarah Palin to the groundlings of Shakespeare’s day, and says that the groundlings are the ones who turn a play into a hit or not, and that the Republicans need to cater to those masses and forget the elite. It’s a theory that tries to focus on the populist appeal of the common versus the elite, but ignores the fact that in Shakespeare’s day, even the groundlings understood the real issues behind the stories being told, and that Shakespeare felt no need to dumb down the message to appeal to them.

MG Siegler compares Twitter to Walter Cronkite in today’s age of realtime. I like his points, but the prism is ever so slightly askew. We gathered around Uncle Walter, (and others) when news happened, no matter how messy the reporting was because we had no other real choice. In today’s world the choices are just as messy, quicker, and unfortunately able to be tied into knots by the sheer volume of reporting and re-reporting news as it surfaces. In my view, the trust factor (and the forgiveness for error factor) is diminishing to a point that no one has belief in any source.

August 09, 2009

Take it for what it’s worth. Frank Schaeffer helped weave the Christian Right into our political life, then had a Lee Atwater-like change of heart once things got out of control. Here he talks about how we are damaging our political and social fabric.

This story is recycling again after it came up during the last administration. Politicians and scientists may debate whether or not climate change is real, but the military is preparing for climate change as a threat to national security.

Apple goofs again. And again. And again. Sorry. Broken record there. This one is about Boobs. No dictionaries this time. Just boobs. Apple has reached a tipping point where they fortunes are starting to decline. This happens to boobs. It’s called gravity.

July 25, 2009

It is painful when you know you are drowning or attached by a lifeline to a sinking ship. The media, in several of its various facets, keeps attempting to reinvent itself while watching its models decay and corrode before its eyes. Some are working hard to find new ways, some are wasting their energy lashing out at the Internet as the bad guy, and some are just being foolish, clinging to whatever they can to stay afloat in a sea that will only swallow them more quickly because they are thrashing so hard to swim against the current.

Two examples of this from this week include the AP's move to DRM news and Lou Dobbs' leaping off a cliff by keeping the Birthers story alive.

First the AP. This has been bandied about and dissected extremely well in a number of places. (here, here, and here.) I'm not going to dissect it further. My $.02 is this. Regardless of what the Columbia Journalism Review may think, and those who fear the worst my rail against, the AP has just accelerated its own demise. There will be some fights and tussles in the short term and that will seem to indicate life. Heck, the AP might even make a few dollars for awhile, but in the long term, what the AP is attempting to set up as a life preserver will deflate and that will be that. Until the body dips under the water for the last time at some point in the future, there will be plenty of agitated and anxious yelling from those watching the spectacle from the river bank.

On to Lou Dobbs. Talk about grasping for straws. Setting Dobbs aside for the moment, this entire Birther episode has proven once and for all that the 24 Hour Cable news machine has turned into parody of itself.

Report the story as a non-story, no wait, it might be a story, report the story as a possible story, no wait, it's not, lets back off, no, wait, let's report that this is still getting traction among crazies even though its been refuted, now, let's report it that even with refutation it is still getting traction, now, let's backtrack and ask are the crazies really crazies.

The only thing left is the inevitable post mortem with Howard Kurtz asking should the media have covered this the way it did. You can basically follow this pattern on any big story that really isn't a story for the last few years, and probably for an eternity to come.

But back again, to Mr. Dobbs. His own producers debunked the story when Lou was taking the night off, and yet he comes back on to his show and continues to run with it, forcing his boss to trip over his own tongue ten different ways from Sunday trying to explain. When my mother, who loves loved to watch Lou Dobbs, turns him off, you know Dobbs has not only jumped the shark, he jumped it, missed, and got chewed up and spit out by the creature as not worth the calories for digestion.

I don't know. Maybe Dobbs does believe the things he spouts. I doubt it. Maybe he is a lunatic running the asylum at CNN. I think he's just trying, vainly, to stick out in a crowded market to feed his own sense of self importance, while clinging desperately to a career he used to have. My friend Mickeleh on Twitter says CNN needs to produce a document proving Lou Dobbs has a brain. I tend to disagree. Why ask the guys who installed the plugged toilet in the first place to fix it when its overflowing with crap all over your floor?

Folks are spending a lot of time arguing about saving journalism and the like. I’m not sure it is worth saving at times. Here’s an example of why. From Dvorak Uncensored, some interesting “suppressed footage” from 60 minutes the Swine Flu vaccine disaster from 1977-78.

Frank Rich, predictably, continues to elevate Palin through his derision of her. Of course she deserves the derision. Rich’s problem here is that he understands ‘real Americans’ as much as Palin, Mika Brzezinksi, or anyone else who has been tossing that phrase around lately as if it means something.

Google shakes up things with the announcement of the Google Chrome OS. Some (like me) think this will change things long before we even see the eternal beta. Some think not. Hot topic in the tech world, that will turn hotter.

June 13, 2009

Call it a revolution, call it a coup d'etat (one Iranian election official did), call it status quo, call it whatever. If you tried to find any substantive and breaking news on what is going on in Iran on Saturday afternoon your cable news outlets certainly weren't going to help you, proving once again that if you're going to have a revolution, you'd better do it on a Tuesday when everyone is at work and not during the weekend. Print publications seem to be behind as well, at least their Internet editions.

That said, the Internet, especially Twitter, and to some extent YouTube, is alive with news, some you can trust, some you have to remain skeptical about. But hey, that's just like the any news source.

It is still far too early to determine what is really going on, but it seems like Iran's government infrastructure is falling a part over what appears to be a stolen election. There are reports of journalists and bloggers being shut down, along with various plugs being pulled on communication services. A supposed leak puts Ahmadinejad in 3rd place instead of the official state reporting of him winning the election with 62% of the vote.

Something's happening and if you want to find out what, turn off your boob tube and check out the Inner Tubes.

May 23, 2009

The local newspapers are getting up to speed on the news that Comcast is pulling out of local access programming here in our area and their coverage sheds some more light on the subject. I blogged about it the other day here. Here’s a link to the Winchester Star article covering the story.

May 12, 2009

The much anticipated and much ballyhooed SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone is scheduled for sometime after midnight tonight. At one point you could have counted on Slingbox users going crazy and downloading the app eagerly, even at the $29.95 price tag. That’s the same price the Windows Mobile app has always been. But at least on that platform, you get a 30 day free-trial. Not with the iPhone version.

The real issue here though is that AT&T has forced Apple (who would have thunk that) into crippling the app and cutting off use on the 3G Network, and thus discriminating against iPhone users. How’s that? Well, you can use the app on the AT&T network on other platforms using 3G. Just not the iPhone.

Look, for some time now AT&T has skated by with a network that doesn’t live up to its advertising claims. Far from it. Urban and rural dwellers alike scoff openly at the claims in the advertising and fume at the inefficiency. Word is AT&T is busy trying to upgrade it before the next version of the iPhone is released. Hopefully they will.

But this latest episode proves that AT&T think we’re all just dummies to be marketed to. Here’s the thing, if they are so afraid of their network collapsing under the weight of media streaming, pull it for all platforms. Stop other apps that do video streaming (I really don’t want to see this BTW) and just admit that you’re selling more seats on the plane than you’ve got available.

AT&T gets to laugh at this, because for at least another year they’ve got a lock on the money train that is the iPhone. They stand to rake in even more dollars here in just a few weeks. Time for AT&T to quit treating its customers like idiots.

April 26, 2009

A hybrid from of Swine Flu is filling the weekend’s news coverage with headlines threatening a pandemic. Where did this come from and how did it just pop up so quickly? Guess we won’t have answers for some time, but for now, it all reads like the 1st Act of a disaster flick with a scary conclusion. Reports are that it started in Mexico, has moved to Texas, Kansas, and California and possibly New York here and New Zealand abroad.

Speaking of viruses, word from some sources is that the Conficker virus is starting to do its thing.Whatever that is.

Everyone is looking at Obama’s first 100 days. It is a meaningless exercise in any case and always has been. But the NY Times has a look back at some past 100 Days mark that put the reasons why into perspective.

Unboxing videos can either be by the books here’s what we got, or very passionate. This one falls into the latter category. Perhaps too much so. Never seen gadget lust evolve into this before.

Kent Newsome writes some about Twitter and is opening line is a good one. He says it often feels like a mashup of Deepak Chopra and P.T. Barnum.

When legal goes way wrong. A son dies but a company keeps harassing his mother for early termination fees on a contract. Give me a break.